Geeks To Go is a helpful hub, where thousands of volunteer geeks quickly serve friendly answers and support. Check out the forums and get free advice from the experts. Register now to gain access to all of our features, it's FREE and only takes one minute. Once registered and logged in, you will be able to create topics, post replies to existing threads, give reputation to your fellow members, get your own private messenger, post status updates, manage your profile and so much more.

Cant detect / find network card after clean install on new hard drive

jmcconkey

Posted 21 October 2011 - 09:45 AM

jmcconkey

Member

Member

61 posts

Hey Guys,

Recently my hard drive seemed to just die. No clicking, nothing before hand. But when i turned on my computer i get an error after the Dell bios splash screen appears telling me that Hard-Disk couldn't be found. After trying a new sata cable and still no good, i bought a new hard drive today. Installed it, and turn it on, installed windows xp sp3 from my Dell recovery disk and windows comes up nice and good now. I tried installing the drivers from the dell recovery disk that has all the drivers, and for what ever reason it can not find the onboard network adapter. It says that it is not installed or on "Deep Sleep". I have an active network cable installed, but i did notice that there was no lights on the plug. So i tried downloading the drivers from the realtek website, and still no good.

So i thought, maybe the nic was no good now as well, so i popped in a PCI nic card, and i do have flashing lights on it, but again, windows says there it is not installed. So i thought maybe i needed to disable the onboard nic in the bios, so i did that, and still no good. SO now im not sure what is up? Maybe my onboard is good and it is something else causing this? Any clues guys?

Advertisements

rshaffer61

Posted 21 October 2011 - 10:07 AM

rshaffer61

Moderator

Moderator

34,114 posts

Go HERE and expand the Network entry. There you will find 2 different drivers. One is Dell and the other is the Realtek. I suggest downloading both just in case. Try installing the Realtek first and see if it will work. If not then try the Dell one.Let us know how everything works out.

jmcconkey

Posted 21 October 2011 - 11:16 AM

jmcconkey

Member

Topic Starter

Member

61 posts

Thanks for the quick reply. But unfortunately this did not help. The drivers on the dell site are the same version that are on the resource disk, but regardless i did download them again anyways as instructed. Only the Realtek drivers, as the Dell driver is for wireless and I know for a fact that i do not have a wireless adapter on this computer.

When installing the Realtek driver i get this message at the end of the install: Please shut down and plug realtek PCIE card to complete installation. (again, this is an onboard NIC, so there is nothing to plug in)

I shut completely down, boot back up, but still get nothing.

In device manager under the Network adapters section I only have the following items:

So you can see there is nothing listed for this NIC. Also in device manager there are no Yellow (!) marks by anything.

So like I said, i was thinking maybe that the NIC is dead all together for some reason, but also like said, I plugged in a known good NIC in the PCI Slot and it wont work either. So I am at a total loss now as to what the issue is.

rshaffer61

Posted 21 October 2011 - 12:28 PM

rshaffer61

Moderator

Moderator

34,114 posts

Though I would agree with your assessment of the nic card being dead Please Go to

1: START and the click on RUN 2: Type in devmgmt.msc 3: Click Enter

To do a screenshot please have click on your Print Screen on your keyboard. It is normally the key above your number pad between the F12 key and the Scroll Lock keyNow go to Start and then to All ProgramsScroll to Accessories and then click on PaintIn the Empty White Area click and hold the CTRL key and then click the VGo to the File option at the top and click on Save asSave as file type JPEG and save it to your Desktop

jmcconkey

Posted 21 October 2011 - 03:09 PM

Ok, I did what you said and it is attached. By the way, I don't have internet access on this computer but i knew how to copy the file to a thumb drive over to my laptop so I could upload it.

However, before i did this, i decided to try to format and re-install windows on the new drive to see just in case that something went wrong the first time, and it didnt help. The same problem still.

The thing is, if the onboard NIC is bad now, then why cant i even install a new NIC in a PCI slot? The computer seems to work fine other than it wont accept the fact that a NIC is there at all. No errors or anything, it just doesn't know anything is there at all.

Attached Thumbnails

rshaffer61

Posted 21 October 2011 - 03:31 PM

rshaffer61

Moderator

Moderator

34,114 posts

Nope the second picture is of no use. Installing a new nic card would mean new drivers need to be installed before the system will see it. Most likely you would see a entry named unknown device show up in the Device Manager.Are you sure the nic card is new and works?